Spoilers ahead… Have an Old Fashioned and finish season 5 before reading further…

Five seasons into “Mad Men,” the vintage furniture, fashions and music don’t seem so sharp, moderne and snappy, do they? In 2007 we were charmed by the retro period piece. In 2012 we are less focused on the style and more aware of the unfulfilled dreams, the shallow work and lives, the irreparably damaged relationships and stunted growth.

What a dark turn for the men and women of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce, not even counting last week’s hanging suicide. Don Draper seems to be coming full circle, encountering his difficult dependence on and distrust of women, his alienation from colleagues, his failures despite financial success, complete with visions of his own hanged brother popping up everywhere.

Joanne Ostrow has been watching TV since before "reality" required quotation marks. "Hill Street Blues" was life-changing. If Dickens, Twain or Agatha Christie were alive today, they'd be writing for television. And proud of it.